with a red ribbon and the sunlight was making her chestnut curls shine.
‘Isn’t she pretty?’ Bailey whispered and he could only agree.
Beautiful.
‘She has Ketchup,’ his son added, and Bailey was right. She had her dog in her arms. Why did she have him here?
‘We need Ketchup’s approval,’ she explained. ‘If these dogs are to live next door, we can’t have them growling at each other.’
‘I want a running dog,’ Bailey said.
‘Fast is good,’ Misty agreed. She wasn’t looking at Nick. Her attention was totally on Bailey and he was caught by the fact that he was sidelined.
From the time he’d won his first design prize, aged all of nineteen, Nick had moved among some of the wealthiest women in the world. His boat owners had money to burn and the boats he designed meant he had money to match them.
Women reacted to him. Even when he’d been married, women had taken notice of him. But now it was clear he came a poor second to his son and he thought the better of her for it.
More than that, the sensation had him feeling… Feeling…
Now’s hardly the time to think about how you’re feeling, he told himself. Not when you’re about to move next door to her. You’re here to choose a dog for your son.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ he muttered, and Misty looked at him in astonishment.
‘Don’t sound so severe. This isn’t a trip to the dentist.’
‘It might as well be.’
She’d started walking towards the Shelter but his words stopped her. She turned and met his gaze full on. Carefully, she set Ketchup down on the grass and she disengaged her hand from Bailey’s.
‘If you really don’t want a dog, then stop right now,’ she said, her voice suddenly steely. ‘The dogs in the Shelter have had a tough time-they’ve been abandoned already. They don’t want a half-hearted owner. Bailey, if your daddy doesn’t really want a dog, then of course I won’t insist. You can still share my house, and you and I can share Ketchup.’
She was angry?
She was definitely angry.
‘I got it wrong,’ she told him, still in that cold voice. ‘I thought it was just your stupid qualms about germs and risks. But if it’s more…say it now, Nicholas, and we’ll all go home. Bailey, if your father doesn’t really want a dog, honestly, could you be happy with Ketchup?’
Bailey stared up at her, surprised. He looked down at Ketchup, who looked back at him. Kid and dog.
‘Dad says we can have a dog,’ he whispered.
‘He needs to prove it. Why don’t we leave it for a bit so he can make up his mind? Owning your own dog is a big thing. I’m not sure your dad’s ready for it.’
He was a bright kid, was Bailey, and he knew the odds. He looked up at Nick and he tilted his chin. And then, surprisingly, he tucked his hand into Misty’s.
‘It’s okay,’ he told his father. He swallowed manfully. ‘Miss Lawrence and I can share looking after Ketchup.’ He sounded as if he was placating someone the same age as he was-or younger. ‘If you really, really, really don’t want a dog just for us, then it’s okay, Dad.’ He gulped and clutched his teddy.
It only needed this. Nick closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were still looking at him. Misty and Bailey. And Ketchup. Even Teddy.
Misty’s gaze had lost its cool. Now she looked totally nonjudgmental. She’d backed right off. She’d given him a way out.
Behind them, a woman was emerging from the Shelter. Glancing across at them. Starting to lock up.
Was this Henrietta, finishing early? She was letting him off the hook as well.
He felt about six inches high.
What had he got himself into?
He glanced once more, at his son and his son’s teacher, and suddenly he knew exactly what he was getting into.
‘You want to go home?’ Misty asked and he shook his head.
‘I’m an idiot,’ he told her. And then… ‘Are you Henrietta?’ he called before any more of his stupid scruples could get in the way of what was looking more and more…he didn’t know what, but he surely intended to find out.
‘Yes,’ the woman called back, cautious.
‘Can you wait a moment before you lock up?’ he asked her. ‘If it’s okay with you… My son and I are here to see if we can choose a dog. We both want a dog and we’re hoping we can find one, right now. A dog that’s fast. A dog that’s young and a dog who can belong just to Bailey.’
And in the end it was easy.
Misty and Nick left things to Henrietta and Bailey. ‘Henrietta knows her dogs,’ Misty told Nick. ‘She won’t introduce him to one that’s unsuitable.’
Bailey walked along the pens, looking worried. He looked at each dog in turn. They barked, they whined or they ignored him, and Bailey looked increasingly unsure.
But then he came to a pen near the end, and he stopped.
‘This one’s a whippet,’ Henrietta said. ‘She’s fast. She’s hardly more than a pup and she’s a sweetheart.’
‘She’s hurt her face,’ Bailey whispered.
‘Most dogs in here have scars,’ Henrietta told him and she was talking to him as if he was an equal and not six years old.
Bailey looked back along the lines of pens-then, as if he’d made some sort of decision, he sat beside the pen with the whippet. The whippet was lying prone on the concrete floor, her nose against the bars, misery personified.
Bailey put his nose against the dog’s nose. Testing?
Nick started forward, worried, but Misty put her hand on his arm.
‘Trust Henrietta. If she thinks a dog’s safe with kids, she’ll be right. And did you know kids from farms have twenty per cent fewer allergies than city kids? What’s a nose rub between friends?’
Bailey looked back to them, his little face serious. ‘She’s skinny,’ he said cautiously. ‘Can I pat her?’
‘Sure you can,’ Henrietta said, and Nick and Misty walked forward to see. They reached the cage-and something amazing happened. Ketchup stared down at the whippet from the safety of Misty’s arms. He whined-and then suddenly he was a different dog. He was squirming, barking, desperate to get down.
The whippet was stick-thin, fawn with a soft white face, and she was carrying the scars of mistreatment or neglect. She’d been flattened on the floor of the pen, shivering, but as Misty knelt with Ketchup in her arms she lunged forward and hit the bars-and she went wild.
Both dogs did.
They were practically delirious in their excitement. Two dogs with cold bars between them… That these dogs had a shared history was obvious.
‘Hey, I’d forgotten. You’ve brought her friend back.’ Henrietta grinned and stooped to scratch Ketchup behind his ears, only Ketchup wasn’t noticing. He was too intent on the whippet.
‘These two were found together,’ Henrietta told them. ‘I reckon they were dumped together. We put ’em in pens side by side but they seemed inseparable so they ended up together. Your little guy…’ She motioned to Ketchup. ‘He’s cute and normally we’d have had no problem rehousing him, but no one’s wanted the skinny one. And somehow no one wanted to separate them.’
‘He’s ugly,’ Nicholas said, looking at the whippet, appalled, and the Shelter worker looked at him as if she wasn’t sure where to place him.
‘I like whippets,’ she said neutrally. ‘They’re great dogs, intelligent and gentle and fun. Whippets always look skinny, but you’re right, this one’s ribs practically cross over. She’s a she, by the way. She’ll feed up, given time, but, of course, they ran out of time. They were both in the van when it crashed on Thursday. Dotty Ludeman found this one in her yard last night and brought her in. So here they are, together again.’
